The owner looked upon them with fond calculation.  She was fondly calculating that they would have been worth about fifty per cent. more to her with ears unmutilated.  She grew resentful that their true worth should not be acclaimed by the world.  In the sight of heaven they were pure-breds; so why should they suffer through the oversight of a herd boss that hadn’t anywhere near such distinguished ancestry?  And so on, as the lady says.

We left the lane at last and were on the county road, but headed away from the Arrowhead and food.  No doubt there remained other homes for us to wreck.  We mounted a rise and the road fell from us in a long, gentle slope.  And then a mile beyond, where the slope ended, I beheld a most inviting tiny pleasance in this overwhelming welter of ranch land, with its more or less grim business of cattle.

It was a little homestead fit to adorn an art calendar to be entitled Peace and Plenty—­a veritable small farm from some softer little country far to the east.  It looked strangely lost amid these bleaker holdings.  There was a white little house and it sported nothing less than green blinds.  There was a red barn, with toy outbuildings.  There was a vegetable garden, an orchard of blossoming fruit trees, and, in front of the glistening little house, a gay garden of flowers.  Even now I could detect the yellow of daffodils and the martial—­at least it used to be martial—­scarlet of tulips.  The little place seemed to drowse here in the noontide, dreaming of its lost home and other little farms that once companioned it.

To my pleased surprise this unbelievable little farm proved to be our next stopping place.  At its gate Ma Pettengill dismounted, eased the cinch of her saddle and tied her horse to the hitching rack.  I did likewise by the one-time cinch binder.

“Now,” I wondered, “what devastating bomb shall we hurl into this flower-spiced Arcady?  What woe will she put upon its unsuspecting dwellers, even as she has ruined four other homes this day?  This should be something really choice.”  But I said no word and followed where the avenger stalked.

We unlatched the white gate and went up a gravelled walk between the rows of daffodils and tulips and hyacinths.  We did not ascend the spotless front porch to assault its innocent white door, but turned aside on a narrow-gauge branch of the gravelled pathway and came to a side porch, shaded by maples.  And here, in strict conformity to the soundest behests of tradition, sat two entirely genuine Arcadians in wooden rocking-chairs.  The male was a smiling old thing with winter-apple cheeks and white hair, and the female was a smiling old thing with winter-apple cheeks and white hair; both had bright eyes of doll blue, and both wore, among other neat things, loose and lovely carpet slippers and white stockings.

And, of course, the male was named Uncle Henry and the other one was named Aunt Mollie, for I was now presented to them.  They shyly greeted me as one returned to them after many years in which they had given me up.  And again I wondered what particular iniquity we had come here to do.